


Sanguine

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-15
Updated: 2007-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy, Bess, and George make a return visit to Red Gate Farm, to investigate an unusual crime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanguine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Rysler

 

 

Nancy Drew sat in the front seat of her blue convertible, staring out at a clearing in the woods. High above, the moon was silver and full, casting its beams on a wavering group of white indistinct figures between the trees. Between them, points of candlelight flickered.

Behind her, the titian-haired sleuth could hear Bess Marvin's teeth chattering, but the night was only mildly cool. Also in the backseat was Bess's tomboy cousin, George Fayne, usually the most stouthearted of the group. She was pinning a makeshift hooded robe on her cousin; Nancy could hear the rustle of fabric over the continual chirp of crickets. George was also as near scared out of her wits as Nancy had ever seen her.

"It's going to be all right," Nancy said, calmly and firmly. "We just need evidence. Then the cops come and it's all over."

Millie Burd had contacted the three chums when some of the livestock in their expanded business had started going missing, only to turn up the next morning in bloody, horrible remains. The police had come out, looked around, and decided that Red Gate Farm was just the victim of a rather gruesome prank, probably by some local troublemakers. Millie, who had never possessed the staunchest constitution, was less sure, and never liked walking the fields just to find some other dismembered cow or goat. Plus it was bad for business, and bad for business meant bad prospects for Millie.

So Nancy, Bess, and George had come out for another one of their long visits, without telling Carson or their parents exactly what the reason was. Hannah had sent Nancy off, merrily, with a list of produce items to bring back, and a strict admonishment to get plenty of clean country air. Which Nancy had, but she had been walking around the farm looking for clues. Same thing, she reasoned.

She'd made sure that the previous group of white-robed criminals were no longer lurking around Red Gate Farm, between horseback-riding outings and housecleaning chores. Then Millie had suggested the girls look into one of the boarders, a severe raven-haired woman going by the name of Miss Van Horn, whose arrival had preceded the cattle mutilations by about a month.

Now the three best friends, who had been together through thick and thin and many sleepovers, stakeouts, and shared beds, had tracked the icy, cutting, and full-lipped Miss Van Horn to the clearing. She had hastily pulled on a white robe of some sort before ducking through the trees. Nancy, who kept a spare set of bedsheets in her trunk just for this very purpose, had cajoled an unwilling Bess and a slightly less unwilling George into infiltrating, taking pictures with a small camera she also happened to keep in her handbag, and then having the whole lot arrested for destruction of private property. Or livestock. Nancy mentally shrugged, glad she didn't have to know.

"What if they start taking the robes off?" George pointed out, in what would have been a very sensible question if not for the slight quaver in her voice.

"What if everyone's there tonight and they see we don't belong?" Bess chimed in. Her voice wasn't quavering so much as holding on for dear life in an earthquake.

"Well..." Nancy chewed thoughtfully on a hangnail. "We could get close enough to eavesdrop, but we still need to get close enough to get a picture of them with a cow who has the Red Gate brand. They're trespassing, but still."

"Right," Bess said, sounding almost relieved. "Or, you know, we could go eavesdrop and figure out what they're doing and then go call the cops."

Nancy pushed her door open impatiently. "If we wait, they might be gone," she hissed, pulling her seat forward so the girls could follow. "Do you want another dismembered cow on your conscience?"

"No," Bess and George chimed sadly, climbing out of the convertible in their costumes.

Nancy, who had dressed in black for the stakeout, went on ahead, keeping quiet. She looked back to see Bess and George trying their best to be similarly silent, but their white outfits, even rendered an indistinct grey by the clouded moon, stuck out against the black landscape. She was about to motion to the two of them to lose the disguises when a figure she had luckily managed to give a wide berth stepped out of the shadows, approaching the cousins. The young sleuth's heart caught in her throat.

"Mistresses of the Night, what is the password?"

Bess and George exchanged a glance, holding tight to each other's hands. Nancy, her heartbeat filling her and sounding so loud she was surprised it did not echo through the clearing, closed her eyes and tried to think of something, anything, that could be a password, through all the clues they had sifted, the surreptitious searches of the icy-eyed boarder's room. There had been the counterfeit $20 bill, which, despite all the alarm bells it set off in Nancy's head, appeared to be entirely coincidental. There was the letter Miss Van Horn had received from someone named Harriet, which had been partially in Latin, but no Latin Nancy had ever learned in school. Nancy had made a copy of that letter and sent it to a professor she knew, but his only response had been a very brief return letter that the three girls should come discuss it with him in person. Preferably dressed in their schoolgirl uniforms. Nancy had shrugged that off.

At the same time Nancy remembered the plain postcard they had found with but a single phrase in the message box, Bess and George nervously chimed its legend, "Sanguina sanguinarium." Nancy cringed a little at Bess's lapsed pronunciation, but the watchguard now appeared bored, and waved the two of them through. With simultaneous glances in Nancy's direction, the two of them walked very slowly through the trees, toward the clearing, where the robed figures were now seated in a very close circle. And chanting. The sound of it made the hairs on the back of Nancy's neck stand on end.

What to do? Nancy debated for a split second that felt like an eternity. Sitting on the ground in white hooded robes was no crime, but at the center of the circle Nancy could make out the rough figure of a cow, making a plaintive mooing. The cow was most likely the one Millie had discovered missing earlier in the day, which meant, in all likelihood, the cow's life and liberty were now almost certainly forfeit. Along with the liberty of Bess and George, were they discovered. Surely it was just as easy, if not easier, to kill a human than a cow. Nancy sighed impatiently under her breath, wishing that Millie hadn't suffered an attack of nerves and begged off for this trip. She could have identified the cow and then Nancy wouldn't have had any problem.

But they're trespassing, Nancy told herself, and, decision made, began a long slow path that would take her out of the guard's likely view. When she reached her convertible again, Nancy let it coast until she reached the winding dirt path, then raced all the way back to Red Gate Farm.

"Quick, Millie, the telephone," Nancy cried, out of breath with excitement. "Bess and George have infiltrated and are doubtless getting plenty of evidence as we speak!"

"And the cow?" Millie's eyes were bright, but fearful.

"We might have a chance to save her life!" Nancy raced over to the set, but the receiver was dead in her ear. She jiggled the handle a few times. "This infernal thing isn't working!"

"Oh," Millie said, dropping her knitting and wringing her hands. "When the field hands were digging a new trench earlier we thought they might have cut through the line."

Nancy made an outburst of infinite frustration and flew out the door and back to her car, feeling the seconds pass. She tossed her purse into the seat and her own copy of the partially Latin letter fell out, and when she picked it up to hastily push it back into her purse, a phrase jumped out at her, and suddenly it all fell into place. The murdered animals, Millie's comment that they should have bled more given their wounds, the midnight meeting in the woods, the lack of a baritone voice in the chants.

"Oh, I hope I'm wrong," she muttered, putting her arm over the back of the other seat to carefully back out of the driveway before she gunned the car into high gear, heading for the nearest neighbor's house.

By the time the police arrived, it was too late to save the cow. Many of the figures, robes laying discarded behind and expanses of pale skin gleaming in the moonlight, fled into the woods, only to be pursued and subdued by the policemen. Their howls of dismay and rage filled the night.

The robes were splattered and soaked with blood, not all of it bovine.

Nancy stumbled through the brush, heading toward the two solitary figures who remained in the circle, their arms wrapped tight around each other. Before she could force her gaze away, Nancy saw the dark circle of a bleeding hickey on Bess's neck, the unnatural bright red on George's lips, the neat piles of their black clothing, the way their improvised robes hung disheveled on their shoulders. When the ambulance arrived, they walked as one to its double doors, their hands never unclasping.

And the three of them never talked about that night at Red Gate Farm again.

 


End file.
